opinions and past exp on telephoto lenses

[chauncey]

Regardless of what it is used for, the 70-200 f/2.8 is a staple in any lens collection and is surpassed only by prime lenses. Being a Canon guy, I cannot speak for Nikon TC's.

[ajohnw]

Sometimes when contemplating things like this it's best to just go and do it cheaply and get on with it and take it from there. In this case I think that means a used Sigma 170-500mm or the new version new or used. Both options appear to be within your budget. That way you gain some experience and also find out if it's for you and the problems - the latter is rather important as unless you have it deciding what equipment to buy is a bit difficult.

One aspect is your current camera. If I remember correctly that has a tilt up screen. It could well make using a monopod a lot easier. I sometimes feel that a right angle attachment for the viewfinder would be useful on either a monopod or tripod as an alternative to using the screen.

When people say must have a tripod or must have a monopod forget it and find out. The Sigma IS from reviews is worth 2 stops. You can probably shoot at 800 ISO without any serious problems again find out. It might work out well even higher. There is no need to go running about in national parks or in the bush to do this in fact it's best done before even trying that. The subjects don't matter for that. I would say that after taking getting on for 100 shots like this you will have at least a feel for what you can achieve.

Looking at photo's around on the web I would tend to favour the Sigma 170-500mm over the 150-500mm. Lots of the ones from the 150- seem to be a little woolly at 500mm but it's hard to know what people have done to them or how adeptly they used them. Personally I feel there is a bit of a lens problem these day. Shots more often than not only get shown on PC screens at rather reduced size. Pixel level sharpness is a bit pointless for that. The full sized images are way too big to view at 100% on modern cameras. My Pen for instance 16mp on m 4/3 produces images with around a 50in diagonal. I just home Olympus keep them sharp on zooms that have sensible ratios. It helps a lot with extreme cropping.

John
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[rtbaum]

My Telephoto is a 20 year old Sigma 400mm f/5.6 Telemacro APO. I picked it up for $600 (US) at the my local bricks and mortar. I will not claim it to be the end-all of telephoto lenses, but it is capable of very sharp photos. It requires a body with a motor for autofocus, has no stabilization, and hunts a lot in low light. I may be a little hard-headed but its deficiencies endear it to me, I don't mind the challenge of manually focusing and stalking my birds or sitting quietly on a log waiting for the birds to come into range. Perhaps it is because I come from an area where the hunting tradition is strong .

The point is that if you hunt a bit, you should be able to locate a telephoto that meets your needs by searching local sources or reputable on-line sources.

[Manfred M]

We just got back from a couple of weeks in Ethiopia and had the Sigma 150-500mm lens with us. While I have panned this lens for reliability reasons in the past, it performed flawlessly this time. The shots on this thread were all taken with it:

Ethiopia - Wildlife

I would suggest that the shortest lens you consider would be around 400mm full frame equivilent, if you want to wildlife photography, so on a crop-factor camera, any zoom that goes up to 300mm would give you that.

[ajohnw]

Not exactly on topic but related. I have had some cause to doubt technical lens tests. Some one was asking about lenses for an EM-5 yesterday and I posted my own test of the Olympus 40-150mm. The review summarises as follows and has the graphs to prove it

is a quite good entry-level telephoto zoom lens. It may not be a cracker in terms of delivered resolution but it is no show-stopper either. The image quality is quite impressive in the low to mid portion of the zoom range. At 150mm it is somewhat weaker but not terribly so.

My test shows that it was more or less pixel limited at the distance I tested it at so have to wonder about the actual method used to test it. Could be that distance does have something to do with the difference. It could be down to the test method used or even slight differences in focus as well. I had to manually focus to get the sharpest possible image and it took a lot of care. DOF tables suggest 7+m but there is nothing like that available at the pixel level.

Wont stop me from looking at technical tests though. Perhaps the best answer is to print up some test targets and test them ourselves.

John
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[tclune]

So I'm here in sunny south Africa and decided I'd like to give a go out wildlife photography. I'd like to here some views on some affordable but good quality glass. Something maybe in range of about +-800 usd ? Is there anything out there? I have a Nikon d5100.

I was pretty much in your boat -- I wanted long reach and have shallow pockets and a D5000. That's a pretty tough corner to be in. I tried getting the Kenko 1.4x TC for my Nikon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 VR. This lens is not razor-sharp at the long end anyway, so I probably should have known better. But I got it and tried it. The lens will usually focus (with some hunting) in good light with the Kenko, which is impressive in its own right. But the contrast was just awful. The detail wasn't too bad, but I just couldn't tolerate the lack of contrast.

So I looked around for the next cheapest thing. The suggestion to get a used Nikon 80-400 is a non-starter, BTW. The old version of this lens lacks a focusing motor (and is kind of sucky at the 400 mm end anyway), and the new version with built-in focusing motor is a wonderful lens but costs about $2700 new -- so you won't find one that still functions for less than about two grand used.

The Tamron that has the reach you would need and is in your budget doesn't have a focusing motor. There is a new Tamron that is due out in a few months that goes up to 600 mm and will have a built-in focusing motor. But the price has not been announced AFAIK, and rumors put it at somewhere around $1500. If you're like me, that's just a bit more than I can spend and still remain married.

The Bigma has a decent reputation, but again is a tad expensive. You could probably get a used one in decent shape for something north of a grand, but I worry about buying these monster lenses used. So I bought a new Sigma 150-500 mm. It has a 3-year warranty in the US, but I believe that Sigma only warranties them for 1 year in the rest of the world. They are available for $969 until 12/6 (at least in the US) if memory serves, at which time they will go up by a hundred dollars. It has been asserted that there was a problem with the motor that made it prone to fail on early versions of this lens and it was fixed without changing the model number a couple of years back. I don't know whether that is true or just urban legend, but mine has not had any problems so far. I have only had the lens for a couple of months, so my experience with its robustness is not particularly relevant yet.

I find that I am quite happy with the image quality, even out to 500 mm, as long as I stop down to at least f/8. If you care about image quality, use a tripod with this puppy. If you think about the angle subtended by a single pixel at 500 mm, you will appreciate that it just isn't possible to hold anything steady enough to avoid blur -- even at reasonably fast shutter speeds. I have snapped a couple of hand-held shots at 500 mm and 1/1000 sec shutter speed, but -- if you pixel-peep -- it is clear that the images are less sharp than they would have been with a stable platform. But, if you use delayed shutter, a cable release, and a tripod, you can get very nice results with this lens at that focal length. If you are in a situation that precludes that, a monopod will help while keeping your mobility intact. FWIW

[ClaudioG]

i gotta say..holding out for new Tamron doesnt sound liek a bad idea,, i could sweeten up my wife a bit by then . The Sigma 150-500mm seems a pretty ok option to, but i met a client today who rents out camera equipment. So i will take evryone suggestions into account and see which way i should go after ive rented the lens. Thank you!!!

[ajohnw]

The angle subtended by a pixel explains the resolution problems as well. I found a shot from the Canon 100-400mm that doesn't seem to have been touched - much. Just the link as it is a bit big

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4056/4...3ed75d4b_o.jpg

The answer seems to be in PP. Sharpen the full sized image before reducing and then again but much more modestly after it's reduced. The 1st sharpening settings have to be played about with. It's likely to need to be very strong and optimised by using a larger than default radius. This way if the detail has been captured it will be cleaned up. If it's completely mushy then nothing can be done other than attacking it artisticly etc.

If some one wants some images to play with many of the ones on pixelpeepers have "some rights reserved" allowing further work but retaining copyright. It's not a bad site to see what particular lenses can do but many show CS what ever in the exif.

John
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[ajohnw]

i gotta say..holding out for new Tamron doesnt sound liek a bad idea,, i could sweeten up my wife a bit by then . The Sigma 150-500mm seems a pretty ok option to, but i met a client today who rents out camera equipment. So i will take evryone suggestions into account and see which way i should go after ive rented the lens. Thank you!!!

Couldn't help being curious about that lens. It seems it will be introduced in Japan 1st. I would have thought they might have aimed for Xmas

http://www.tamron.com/en/news/2013/1107.html

The 200-500mm is popular but has no IS. Some feel that one is the best of the lot.

One other answer is smaller sensors. This is why I switched to m 4/3, With a 300mm lens on that gives 600mm rather than 480 on APS. The field of view is 0.29m at 5m, 0.57m at 10m, 1.15 at 20m, 2.3m at 40m and 4.6m at 80m. That's across the sensor 17,3mm so roughly the same as 600mm on 35mm. The small bird to animal distance range is less than 5m to say 40m for full frame images. Still not great at the bird end but the kit is light to carry around. The numbers can be scaled loosely for other focal lengths and sensor sizes. Nikon's CX cameras look interesting as the crop factor is 2.7 but lenses are a problem for distance work. I suspect that a crop factor of 2.7 would be inferior to APS for some work but much better than a typical bridge camera. In my view there aren't any penalties moving from 1.6 to 2 - just why don't they do a decent reasonable cost 200-500 or so to cover the old usual focal lengths but even that wouldn't be great for small birds Probably why people use hides.

John
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[ajohnw]

Trying to get a too 500mm lens to use on micro 4/3 I just had a try with a screw drive AF nikon fit Tamron 200-500mm. The results aren't bad but all I could shoot was something static as it's a bit windy. This is the result after a bit (default) amount of rawtherapee sharpening with anti halo enable and far whites not sharpened. 100% resolution crops



This is the straight image



Without the colour adjustment to sharpening there would be distinct while line round the black letters. Not worth showing the wide open shot as it's woolly even at 1/5 size. Aperture one click down and the results are as above 5.6 -> F8 at 200mm. F11 may be a touch better. Not sure what it gives at 500mm.

Not sure if I could use it hand held without a rifle type attachment. It weighs in a 1.5kg plus the problem of focusing manually at 5x magnification. Sadly I can see signs of vertical shake and have a feeling this is down to the main lens barrel being loose in the rear end by the camera. Maybe some one has one? This might be normal.

The blur to the right is a post, well out of focus.

John
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